Profile: Xi Jinping and his era (5)

As chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), Xi is
tasked with ensuring the world's largest military take a "crucial
leap" in the new era from being simply large to being strong.

To achieve this, the commander-in-chief of an armed force of two
million servicemen and women has outlined a two-step approach.

"We will make it our mission to see that by 2035, the
modernization of our national defense and our forces is basically
complete; and that by the mid-21st century our people' s armed
forces have been fully transformed into world-class forces," Xi
said in the report to the 19th CPC National Congress.

Neither of these two goals is easy, and Xi has turned to
reviving the army's revolutionary spirit of wartime to seek
momentum.

At Xi's behest, a conference on the army's political work
convened in 2014 in Gutian Township, Fujian Province, the very
place where Mao Zedong presided over the gathering in 1929 which
established the principle of the Party's absolute leadership of the
army.

One of Mao's most famous dictums back then was that "political
power comes from the barrel of a gun." In the new era, the army
faces much different tasks and missions: from safeguarding the
territorial sovereignty of a vast land, sea and airspace, to
facilitating national unification; from protecting China's
ever-increasing overseas interests, to counter-terrorism and
disaster relief.

But for Xi, the top priority remains the same as it was eight
decades ago -- putting the entire military under unified and
absolute command, and ensuring that the armed forces follow the
orders of the Party.

In the new Gutian conference, Xi reaffirmed the People's
Liberation Army (PLA)' s fine traditions and principles of
political loyalty and leadership by the Party. He also indicated
some outstanding problems which had to be resolved "right away," or
the PLA risked degradation and deviation.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, more than 100 PLA officers
at or above the corps-level, including two former CMC vice
chairmen, have been investigated and punished. The number is even
greater than that of army generals who died in the battlefield
during revolutionary times.

A new disciplinary commission and a commission for political and
legal affairs were set up under the CMC on the orders of Xi, and
more than 40 military statutes and regulations were adopted in a
bid to preserve exemplary PLA conduct, strict discipline and high
morale.

Xi also ordered the military to relinquish all business
activities, a move that touched upon considerable vested interests.
Some had expressed reservations, but Xi went through with it.

"The army shall act like an army," he said.

All these have pressed the PLA to focus on the improvement of
its combat capability which, according to Xi, should be the "only
and fundamental" benchmark of the military.

Xi is well aware of the need to improve PLA combat capability.
Back in 2012, he pointed out that the military was lacking in its
capacity to win in modern warfare.

Lagging behind on the military front is lethal to the security
of the country, Xi said. "I have read a lot on China's modern
history, and it gives me great pain whenever I come across a time
when we dropped back (in military building) and fell victim to
invasions," he said.

To make sure that painful history does not repeat itself, Xi has
spearheaded national defense and military reform since 2015.

Military organizations were revamped and the joint combat
command mechanism was improved. The four military headquarters --
staff, politics, logistics and armaments -- were reorganized into
15 agencies, while the seven military area commands were regrouped
into five theater commands.

In the meantime, the percentage of land forces' personnel among
the entire PLA was cut to less than half for the first time, and
the new Rocket Force and the Strategic Support Force were
established.

The number of PLA officers was also reduced by 30 percent, and
hundreds of generals switched posts.

Xi's uncompromising resolve yielded solid results. The past five
years were witness to the greatest strides the PLA has ever made
towards modernization.

A tiered combat command system including the CMC, theater
commands and the troops was set up. In addition, a management
system links the CMC to services and then to the troops.

Civil-military integration is now a national strategy, and
science and innovation have been given greater gravitas.

In the past five years, China's first domestically built
aircraft carrier was launched; new transport aircraft and stealth
jets were commissioned; and the latest missiles were unveiled.
Military hardware research made various breakthroughs.

The PLA is now a much leaner force with an optimized structure
and more balanced services, one that takes strength less from its
size, but more from its fighting capacity and efficacy.

Military experts believe the latest round of reform launched by
Xi was the biggest change ever to the PLA.

Xi's affinity to the PLA dates back to his early days. Indeed,
Xi is a PLA "veteran."

In 1979, straight after graduating from Tsinghua University, Xi
joined the military, serving as secretary to the minister of
national defense in the General Office of the CMC.